Ender Wiggin VS Grand Admiral Thrawn

[Gandalf]

I read the book today, and it occured to me, this guy is some dort of battle god, could he beat Thrawn if they both commanded say, 200 Ties each?

Your opinions?

[haas mark]

I read the book today, and it occured to me, this guy is some dort of battle god, could he beat Thrawn if they both commanded say, 200 Ties each?

Your opinions?

If he had a Little Doctor, yes. Otherwise, I have no idea.

[Gandalf]

No Little Doctors, just pure tactics

[haas mark]

No Little Doctors, just pure tactics

Heehee lol, Well, I dunno much about Thrawn, so I'll just put my vote on Ender for now. Until I see some actual debate going on.

[Gandalf]

I'm backing Ender as well

[weemadando]

Ender takes it. He's been raised from birth (arguably) to be the ultimate tactician and strategist. Thrawn can't defeat him if Ender knows his tech capabilities and has his support staff.

I think a better match would be Benedict vs Ender (one off match, no pattern use allowed)

[Patrick Degan]

Ender Wiggin is a pathetic brainwashed kid who was essentially programmed to push the button on a genocidal device; in the context of a war between races confined to sublight drive and relativistic star travel. Grand Admiral Thrawn has a modern FTL-capable warfleet with an arsenal of superweapons and heavily armed, fast fighter craft at his command.

And its not that difficult to probe an enemy to get an idea as to how he fights. That's the function of scouting and military intelligence, which any commander would employ in testing an unknown opposite number.

[weemadando]

Ender Wiggin is a pathetic brainwashed kid who was essentially programmed to push the button on a genocidal device; in the context of a war between races confined to sublight drive and relativistic star travel. Grand Admiral Thrawn has a modern FTL-capable warfleet with an arsenal of superweapons and heavily armed, fast fighter craft at his command.

And its not that difficult to probe an enemy to get an idea as to how he fights. That's the function of scouting and military intelligence, which any commander would employ in testing an unknown opposite number.

*SLAP* Read the fucking context of the thread. They both have equal forces! Identical forces even! *muttering* dickhead */muttering*

[haas mark]

Ender Wiggin is a pathetic brainwashed kid who was essentially programmed to push the button on a genocidal device; in the context of a war between races confined to sublight drive and relativistic star travel. Grand Admiral Thrawn has a modern FTL-capable warfleet with an arsenal of superweapons and heavily armed, fast fighter craft at his command.

And its not that difficult to probe an enemy to get an idea as to how he fights. That's the function of scouting and military intelligence, which any commander would employ in testing an unknown opposite number.

It was xenocidal. *grumblestupidassgrumble* And read the context.

[Patrick Degan]

Ender Wiggin is a pathetic brainwashed kid who was essentially programmed to push the button on a genocidal device; in the context of a war between races confined to sublight drive and relativistic star travel. Grand Admiral Thrawn has a modern FTL-capable warfleet with an arsenal of superweapons and heavily armed, fast fighter craft at his command.

And its not that difficult to probe an enemy to get an idea as to how he fights. That's the function of scouting and military intelligence, which any commander would employ in testing an unknown opposite number.

*SLAP* Read the fucking context of the thread. They both have equal forces! Identical forces even! *muttering* dickhead */muttering*

My profound apologies, Mr. Fanboy Asshole, for having so offended your delicate sensibilities.

In regards to the actual conflict, having reams of military strategy crammed into your head through intensive programming/brainwashing in the course of six years or so is not the same as actual military experience in the field. Doubly so if the one has never even seen the inside of an actual fighter cockpit. No matter what Orson Scott Card wrote in that idiotic novel of his (which I read and hated after getting through the last page), force-fed booklearning does not make up for the experiential gap. "Flying" a simulator is never the same thing as actually flying combat against equally capable or superior opponnents trying to shoot your ass off. And fighting a war through simulators is never the same thing as actually commanding troops in the field. To put it bluntly, a brainwashed fourteen year old kid would be out of his depth stuck in a TIE fighter cockpit and trying to lead a fighter wing while somebody's actually trying to kill him.

The original objection stands, and the victory goes to Thrawn.

[Moonstone Spider]

I really don't get what's so upsetting about Ender finding a way to bring the Buggers back. You don't like the plot twist ESC put in his novel? Write your own.

Back to the fight, I have to say Ender will probably take this one. The only arena Thrawn can be him in is overall strategy, Ender would win every battle but he never handled things like logistics or overall psychology and there he could lose. In a straight up fight Thrawn's dead meat. Thrawn would probably lose to most members of Ender's Jefe, Bean or Achilles would definetly take him and probably the others as well.

Ender does have plenty of hands-on experience. In brutal simulations he had to invent new tactics on the fly repeatedly, and still won through innovation. He also ran an entire battle campaign and won every single fight against the Buggers. Those weren't book knowledge, those weren't simulations (though he thought they were). Those were real battles against a cunning adaptive foe. Every tactic he used, the Buggers immediately developed a counter-measure for so that it could never use it again. And this was Ender when he was stressed out and half-sick.

In his final Battle just the visible Vanguard of the enemy fleet outnumbered Ender's ships at least 1000:1, and they had technological superiority as well. And Ender managed to break through their lines and pull a victory off (with his whole Jefe helping.) Thrawn's never managed anything remotely like that kind of a victory.

Now Benedict, that's another matter. He's commanded every force in existence, led armies so vast they could march past you for days and still you would see only troops on every horizon. In the past 10,000 years he's never spent an entire day without honing his war skills in some way. He's used the Pattern to examine the same battle from every angle, with slightly different conditions each time to learn everything about the battle. He has studied under every single military mind in the entire Multiverse. In ground battle I think he'd take Ender, Thrawn, and Ender's Jefe all at the same time with ease. However the Amber series never covered any space battles so I don't know if Benedict ever learned to fight in warships. Together they might be a match for him there.

[Patrick Degan]

I really don't get what's so upsetting about Ender finding a way to bring the Buggers back. You don't like the plot twist ESC put in his novel? Write your own.

Because we don't get to unkill an entire race once we've shoved the last body into the ovens in the real world. I think OSC realised he'd dug himself into a moral cesspit on that one and tried writing his way out of it.

Back to the fight, I have to say Ender will probably take this one. The only arena Thrawn can be him in is overall strategy, Ender would win every battle but he never handled things like logistics or overall psychology and there he could lose.

For somebody who's never actually been on a battlefield, psychology would ensure that you get killed. Running a simulator is not the same thing as being in the cockpit.

In a straight up fight Thrawn's dead meat. Thrawn would probably lose to most members of Ender's Jefe, Bean or Achilles would definetly take him and probably the others as well.

When you can demonstrate that being in a nice, safe simulator or console room is the same as being in a fighter cockpit or a starship deck, I might change my mind.

Ender does have plenty of hands-on experience. In brutal simulations he had to invent new tactics on the fly repeatedly, and still won through innovation. He also ran an entire battle campaign and won every single fight against the Buggers. Those weren't book knowledge, those weren't simulations (though he thought they were). Those were real battles against a cunning adaptive foe. Every tactic he used, the Buggers immediately developed a counter-measure for so that it could never use it again. And this was Ender when he was stressed out and half-sick.

Ender was never in a cockpit with actual living pilots swarming around him trying to turn him into a little pink cloud. One turbolaser hit and he never gets a chance to develop any sort of countermeasure. He's dead.

In his final Battle just the visible Vanguard of the enemy fleet outnumbered Ender's ships at least 1000:1, and they had technological superiority as well. And Ender managed to break through their lines and pull a victory off (with his whole Jefe helping.) Thrawn's never managed anything remotely like that kind of a victory.

He won by launching a Big Dumb Weapon at the Bugger homeworld —and this being in what he thought was a way to fail a wargammes simulation. He won't have the Big Dumb Weapon and he won't be in a simulator.

[Stormbringer]

Ender should not be held solely to blame for what happened to the Buggers. He was deliberatly set up to kill them without his knowledge; he didn't know what he had done.



I don't think Ender would be able to take Thrawn. He's never been the best guy under pressure, he tends to crack. With him being pressed by someone as good, if not better than, Ender will break down.

And Ender has been strickly schooled in tactics with only a little training in strategy. He'll be owned by a master strategist like Thrawn.

[Mr Bean]

In his final Battle just the visible Vanguard of the enemy fleet outnumbered Ender's ships at least 1000:1, and they had technological superiority as well. And Ender managed to break through their lines and pull a victory off (with his whole Jefe helping.) Thrawn's never managed anything remotely like that kind of a victory.

Not quite, if one acutal read the battle both from Enders and Bean's Perspective they could have destroyed them before they got within light hours of the planet, if you notice until they got close in they where not even firing, And later-on in Xenocide and Children of the mind we learn the buggers KNEW and LET THEMSELVES DIE


Ender had no chance in that last battle if it where not for the Buggers knowing they had lost and letting Ender get close enough to use the Doctor Device

[HemlockGrey]

Could a mod split this little ghey side-track away from the main thread?

[haas mark]

Could a mod split this little ghey side-track away from the main thread?

Already asked for it.

[Mr Bean]

Ask and yeah shall recive

[Patrick Degan]

Well, that's certainly avoiding the issue of relativity or military R&D which would be advancing on the target world while the attack force would be frozen at the level of technology at which it was in when it left the homeworld. Or the many possible defences which Earth could have deployed, such as seeding the spaces at the Trojan points around Earth with mines or thousands of Little Doctor devices. The first attack was a surprise. Earth would have been prepared for a second attack.

True but as Bean said, we'd have a very hard time bringing them to battle before they hit Earth. There's a huge volume of space around Earth and we'd need gargantuan fleet sizes to cover every last approach. And the father out you want to intercept them the more forces you need to cover a given volume. An offensive operation is the most viable and reasonable strategy.

Yet more proof that Card didn't know shit. Yes there's a huge volume of space around Earth. But the approaches are finite and the space closer in toward Earth is defensible through sheer volume of firepower. And a large body of ships would certainly provide plenty of observable targets.

As for offensive operations being the more viable strategy, the same relativity-based factors which disadvantage a Bugger invasion fleet works the opposite way against an Earth fleet. Indeed, relativity should have resulted in the Buggers being faced by a fleet decades more primitive than the force they initially sent out decades before that.

And if they were advanced enought to kill Earth then it would be a moot point whether it was the same level as on their homeworld. The Buggers were nearly tough enough to take us out the first time and they could have been adavanced enough to do the job when they returned.

But they weren't, so this "what if" argument is moot.

Their tech would be 75 years behind ours when their second attack force came. Their first attack was devestating only because it was unexpected the first time.

It was but we might not have been able to repel another it if they sent sufficient numbers or determination. The tech difference was important but not enought to give us an easy victory. Remember, Rackham won only because he killed the queen in charge (in effect dumb luck). We barely survived and we might not have the next time for all they knew.

The point is that they didn't have the capability to bring enough force to hit us with a killing blow the first time, and without radio, the Buggers had no means to communicate with the homeworld as to the success of their strike. I will say this again: the initial Bugger strike was so devestating because Earth had not been expecting it. Earth would have been prepared for a second invasion attempt: unless you're actually going to buy Card's (via Rackham's) bullshit argument that they would have been helpless unless they go ahead and commit genocide in an all-out offensive (which should itself have been impossible given the relativity trap working against an Earth fleet).

The plain facts of the matter were that the Buggers could not hit Earth in one blow. They could not hit us with everything they had and they couldn't hit us immediately. A STL attack force will be decades in crossing interstellar space, which gives all the advantages to the defenders, not the attack force. Just on those terms alone, the "us or them" argument to try to justify genocide goes out the window.

If they truly fought to the last man and would have kept hitting us if we didn't wipe them out then it would have. Japan wasn't truly prepared to die to the last man so it's a false analogy.

The propaganda of the time said otherwise. Or do you actually believe any government tells its people the whole truth in a war?

The Buggers were prepared to do just that as far as we knew. They had already demonstrated their no quarter policy.

All that said was that their military forces had to be destroyed utterly. Just like we had to annihilate whole Japanese regiments on the islands —who also fought "no quarter".

No, the advantages favor the attacker. A semi-fixed defense will never have advantages against a manuvering opponent. They could bring more numbers, choose when and where to attack. The Buggers held the advantage.

Sorry, but land warfare analogies do not apply to space warfare —particularly in a slower-than-light paradigm. Unless their entire race was migrating across space, the Buggers by definition could not bring their entire force to bear against Earth. It would take decades for their invasion force to make the journey. Independently targetable missiles by the thousands or even millions would be able to track each incoming target and we'd certainly know which approach they'd be taking into our star system, thanks to that wonderful invention known as the telescope. Finally, the Bugger invasion fleet would be frozen, technology-wise, at the level at which they left their homeworld, while Earth's technology would be advancing (that is, in any realistic paradigm). Advantage for the defence. A massive advantage.

[Mr Bean]

Wrong Spot Degan repost in the correct thread and I'll delete your post here(Or you can if you like)

[haas mark]

Wrong Spot Degan repost in the correct thread and I'll delete your post here(Or you can if you like)

I already quoted him over ther, no worries.

[Patrick Degan]

Wrong Spot Degan repost in the correct thread and I'll delete your post here(Or you can if you like)

Go ahead and transfer the post. I can't even find the split thread as yet.

[haas mark]

Wrong Spot Degan repost in the correct thread and I'll delete your post here(Or you can if you like)

Go ahead and transfer the post. I can't even find the split thread as yet.

Its called "Ender's Morality" in SLAM

[data_link]

Getting back to the topic, since this is a purely tactical battle, if Ender decides to fight, he'd own Thrawn's ass six ways from sunday.

Of course, that's IF he decides to fight, which he probably wont, given his existing guilt over the bugger war, not to mention that these would be other human beings he's killing, not buggers.

Conclusion: Ender loses because he is sitting in his cockpit refusing to fight.

[Mr Bean]

Conclusion: Ender loses because he is sitting in his cockpit refusing to fight.

An intresting point however as it was noted, Ender never handles real battle well, he's all well and good in the smiulator but unlike his brother he can't do it for real, When forced to kill he comes apart, Bean knew they where fighting for Real but he easily keep going, Ender however comes apart the instant he learns what he does


Ender is a good tatcision but he does not have the experance nor the acutal knowledge of what Combat is like, The games are a pale comparsion to the screaming of wounded men and the smell of burning flesh

Thrawn can handle that easily and has done his entire life

Ender has not and does not handle it well, coming apart the instant he sees the horrors of war.

[haas mark]

Conclusion: Ender loses because he is sitting in his cockpit refusing to fight.

An intresting point however as it was noted, Ender never handles real battle well, he's all well and good in the smiulator but unlike his brother he can't do it for real, When forced to kill he comes apart, Bean knew they where fighting for Real but he easily keep going, Ender however comes apart the instant he learns what he does


Ender is a good tatcision but he does not have the experance nor the acutal knowledge of what Combat is like, The games are a pale comparsion to the screaming of wounded men and the smell of burning flesh

Thrawn can handle that easily and has done his entire life

Ender has not and does not handle it well, coming apart the instant he sees the horrors of war.

Could this be du to Thrawn's desensitisation to war and mass violence?